The XTV Broadcast System is
our cost effective solution for distribution of
both live and pre-recorded shows, adverts
and idents across our campus. The system
comprises of one computer and three
screens located at various points inside
our main union building. Technically the
system is simple, with the only medium
required to broadcast a show from
anywhere to the screens is CAT5 Ethernet
cable. The computer is linked in with our
university network, and broadcasts the
video and audio through its graphics and
sound cards. The signals then go into a
simple conversion system, turning the
RGB video and the 3.5mm sound
connections into blue, white-blue and
green, white-green wires in the broadcast
Ethernet cables respectively. We use
CAT5 Ethernet purely because it provides
the cheapest solution which is easily
maintainable. The signals then travel
through the building and are converted to
component connections for use with the
screens.
The computer itself runs a modified
version of Ubuntu Server which allows for
easy remote access and control to
broadcast new pre-recorded content, or to
set up the live streaming connection for
any live broadcast XTV undertakes. On
boot (which can be done remotely) a bash
script runs which sets the machine up and
starts a lightweight X session with a
fullscreen version of mplayer running. This
plays through a list of selected shows,
idents and adverts through the day, and
can be interrupted with live broadcasting
whenever necessary. The shows can
come either from video files uploaded
directly to the machine itself, from files
located anywhere on the university
network or from optical media inserted into
the machine, and it can even play shows
located on our website.
The system itself was created so that it
should never crash; if the player breaks for
any reason, the operating system will
simply kill the process and start a new
instance of the player, for as long as is
necessary. The system can be turned off
remotely, but this is usually left to a script
to do so automatically after hours.
Any aspect of the system is easily
upgradable, and the whole project was
designed with expandability in mind,
ensuring it wouldn't take much effort to get
many more screens enabled, with the only
factor being cost. The biggest success of
the system was the outlay being cheap,
since it requires no expensive equipment
beyond the computer and screens.
We feel it has been a success for XTV,
allowing us to get our content out onto
campus and provide an outlet for live
broadcasts. It has really helped us attract
more interest in the station and gain more
members in recent years.
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technical
09
On 30th May 2008, Loughborough
University hosted the 4th Annual Real
Varsity Rugby Union event.
saw
this as an opportunity to showcase all the
skills that the station had learnt since the
beginning of the academic year. ,
there would have to be a huge amount of
planning to pull off a 4.5 hour live
broadcast (only the second ever from
LSUTV) covering both of the rugby
matches that was both exciting and
informative.
In order to maximise the availability of the
program, the match could be viewed in 6
different formats. high and a low quality
QuickTime unicast stream was available
on the LSUTV website, streamed using
Appleʼs QuickTime Broadcaster and
QuickTime Streaming Server.
even
higher quality multicast stream was
available on INUKʼs FreewireTV platform
for students around the country to watch (a
Student TV first) and a computer and big
screen were set up in the rugby VIP area
to receive the live multicast.
whole
match was then replayed on the Student
Union screens just hours after the match
had finished and by the next morning, the
whole match was available on-demand
from the LSUTV website. live website
scorecard was available during the match
to inform viewers of all the match stats.
Due to the fact that the broadcast was
being used to "soft-launch" the new Unibox
channel on the FreewireTV platform, INUK
provided a steadicam and a wireless video
transmitter to get the steadicam pictures
across the crowd to the camera tower
behind.
cables for the 3 cameras,
ambient microphones, pictchside reporter
microphone and 3 talkbacks went back
from there to the gallery, studio and
commentary box 100m away, meaning
there was no need for electricity outside.
The producer of the show had asked the
technical team for a number of things that
are commonly available for large sports
broadcasters but would be impossible for a
Student TV production with no budget to
afford.
such, they had to come up with
innovative ways of achieving the same
effect.
Replays were achieved by having a
continuous live capture into Final Cut Pro
and then when the director called for a
replay, the capture was stopped and the
capture device was turned into a playout
device.
replay operator then simply
wound back the clip and pressed play.
The result was replays available in under
10 seconds.
replay operator could
select any of the 3 cameras to be the input
to their capture, meaning replays were
often from a different angle. similar
concept was applied to achieving a 10
minute highlights package at the end of
the show:
was set to capture
for the whole match and the interesting
points in the game were logged using a
stopwatch.
during half times and at
then end of the matches, the editor used
these notes to quickly find the clips
required. By using pink chroma-keying, it
was possible to create semi-transparent
purple graphics which added to the
professional look of the show. The
technical team also built an autocue,
meaning that the many pieces to camera
could be fluid and professional.
Technical highlight videos are available at:
www.lborosu.org. uk/media/OLDSITE/
varsity
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technical
09
The 'studio' of LSTV's "Call From the
Bassment"
Call From The Bassment is LSTV's
flagship music programme. It showcases
local unsigned talent featuring live
performances shot in a custom designed
studio, as well as featuring gig footage and
interviews with large acts. The
programme's technical achievement is the
quality of the sound recorded from the
'studio' performances. The combination of
the purposely modified room and the
technical set-up of the recording
equipment makes for professional quality
recordings despite operating on a student
budget.
Formerly a dirty party space for local
ravers, 'The Bassment' is now a custom-
built acoustic studio, a testament to
students' ambitious desires to replicate a
fully professional set-up. After a thorough
clean up and the liberal application of
buckets of white and black paint, chalk and
permanent marker, the look and feel of 'the
basement' was complete. After the
acquisition of XLR cables, hand-me down
lights and a small interface mixer, along
with the construction of purpose built
microphone stands (brooms taped to
boxes) and a track and dolly, the sound
hub that is 'The Basement' was born.
The small music team set the space up
specifically for acoustic sessions (with
sound proofing later added in the form of
heavy curtains for full band performances).
SM57s and 58s are borrowed from friends
and other societies and run across the
room between the performers and the
interface mixer. The cables run through a
hole in the wall to a smaller basement
room next door where the sound is
monitored (amidst the noise of a boiler and
electricity counter). Here the 'audio
engineer' sits with his Macbook and
interface, mixing the audio live.
The sessions are shot in half a day using
five cameras synchronized with a clap.
One of the Cannon XM2s is mounted on
an old cast off tripod which is taped to the
home made dolly. This is one of the more
advanced pieces of home made kit -
which is compiled by using an old wooden
painting with two angled Ls of steel
screwed into the bottom. Then we took
apart 2 children's skateboards in order to
screw the wheels to the steel. The dolly
runs on its home made track made from 4
lengths of thin plastic tubing - which used
to hold up a shower curtain.
The student nature of the studio is
highlighted by our lack of professional
equipment - and a high angle wide is
recorded on a camera which is simply
taped to a shelf in the corner of the room.
The 'studio' can be viewed using the two
methods below:
-Photos can be seen at: http://
www.flickr.com/photos/carolinebonser
-The technical quality of the video footage
and sound can be viewed at:
www.lstv.co.uk (click watch online, and the
latest episode of Call From The Bassment
will be on the recent programmes list.)
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09
The technical format of Brookes TV differs
from many of the other student TV stations
in a number of ways. For a start, we
actually broadcast on terrestrial television
in the Oxford area. Our content is aired on
SIXTV at least twice a day, every day.
Rather than produce standalone shows
and programmes, we create a weekly
magazine show comprising a wide variety
of student work.
Our workflow follows the example of
professional newsrooms such as those at
ITN and Sky News.
The equipment we have available to us
includes:
•
A seven terabyte Avid Unity
MediaNetwork system connected via
gigabit Ethernet to more than 40 client
workstations with Avid Media Composer
and Avid NewsCutter XP software.
•
Avid iNews Newsroom Computer
System (NRCS) with 20 client
workstations.
•
Fully featured TV studio with control
room and Avid Airspeed playout server
linked by fibre-optics to the Unity system.
•
Nine standard-def Panasonic
DVX-100B
•
Two high-def 720p JVC GY-HD110
•
More than 20 smaller cameras
ranging from small budget Panasonic NV-
GS330s (usually used for tape capture) to
a few Canon XM1s and XM2s to
complement the larger Panasonics.
•
Four location-recording sound kits
with Røde NTG-2 microphones, portable
mixers and high-quality Sennheiser
headphones.
Our students film and edit their packages
on the Avid system, write their scripts in
the iNews software, and prepare for the
recording of our weekly show on
Wednesday afternoons.
Once all the packages have been
completed, they are sent over fibre-optic
link to our Avid Airspeed video playout
server.
The programme is then ʻbroadcast liveʼ to
tape. The feel is the same as doing it live
as ITN would, however as we supply
SIXTV with the programme being frame
accurate, it is impossible for the studio
team to get the episode on the dot with
12:30mins (to the frame) each half.
The studio has a video wall, vision mixer,
sound desk, supers controller, teleprompt
controller and iNews station for use of the
Broadcast Assistant to make sure we are
on time as the episode is made. Roles in
the gallery include Director, Broadcast
assistant, sound mixer, vision mixer,
playout controller and graphics generator.
The BA (broadcast assistant) tells the
team and the director how we are doing for
time and other information relating to
current or up-coming packages in the
show. The director tells the sound, vision
mixer and playout controller when to roll
the packages and when to cut to them.
The director also directs the people on the
studio floor (presenters and camera ops).
We think it is pretty amazing how we work
in the same way with similar workflow as
the professionals who do it on a daily
basis, which to us makes Brookes TV
technically very impressive.
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technical
09
This year at Demon TV, we have made
several technical decisions that have
allowed our station to progress - itʼs been
a challenge, but at the same time pretty
exciting!
The first decision we made was that from
this year on, we would shoot entirely in HD
(HDV 1080i for the geeks amongst us) -
we have the cameras capable of shooting
in the format (weʼve actually had them for
2 years, in fact) but before now there was
no standard set: some programmes would
end up in 4x3 and in standard definition,
and multiple camera shoots didnʼt end up
looking too good! As a result of this,
content produced this year looks more
coherent and professional than before,
and HD as a buzzword has been pretty
inspiring to new members who joined this
year. Itʼs also given us more experience
with the new formats (not to mention a few
headaches too), and left the head of post
production ambivalent towards both
Windows PCs and Macs.
Hot on the heels of the decision to move to
HD, we decided to take advantage of the
format to produce high definition podcasts
that would be made available through
iTunes. So far, weʼve managed to produce
a working iTunes RSS feed that lists all of
our current programmes to date, plus one
high definition podcast. You can search for
"Demon TV" on iTunes and weʼll appear in
the directory, and when accessed the
podcasts download straight from our site,
www.demontv.co.uk - the RSS feed is also
implemented into the site, and users can
subscribe to it to receive updates from
both general news and recently added
programmes.
.. Bringing us onto the site design!
www.demontv.co.uk underwent a redesign
this year in order to become more
interactive and, well, interesting. The
programme flow was redesigned
(implementing the "jwplayer", a great flash
player that people are no doubt familiar
with), and the site is now much more
visual, with a photography page and
thumbnails allowing people to preview the
programmes before playing them. Given
YouTubeʼs recent decision to syndicate HD
content, we have also trialled a couple of
our programmes in the 720P HD format on
our DemonTV Youtube channel, providing
users with another way of viewing our
content.
Technically, itʼs been quite exciting for
Demon TV this year, and we hope to come
up with similar achievements next year,
perhaps being able to finally implement
our IPTV concept (video in University
halls) and take advantage of the new video
formats that are bound to pop up.
Website link: www.demontv.co.uk
iTunes store link: http://itunes.apple.com/
WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/
viewPodcast?id=306232759
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09
Our website has been in development
since Summer 2008. Having gone through
several versions, we settled on the current
site at the end of January this year.
The site was built from scratch using
xhtml, php, mySQL, java script and
embedded flash. All of the coding and
design work was done by three active
members of GUST with no previous
experience in website development.
Our aim was to entice potential viewers
and members within a few seconds of
arriving at the site.
The first tactic we used to achieve this was
honesty. By clearly printing who we are
and what we do right at the top of the
home page and giving the viewer three
clear options to take the next step, should
they wish to do so. This immediately
answers the super-question "Is this what
I'm looking for?"
The next tactic was to make the whole site
"gettable", which helped decide the design
of a number of elements including the
global navigation. Right at the top of the
page in a fixed position along with the
station's logo (which after first viewing
would become ignorable). It is tabulated
with inverting colours so the user knows
exactly where they are within the site and
is unmissably large on screen.
The three corresponding sections are then
aimed at the different potential visitors:
someone wanting to watch our videos;
someone thinking of joining GUST ;
someone looking for a favour to come film
their event/ graduation etc.
Once the viewer enters a section of the
website, they are presented with exactly
what they need, and nothing more.
Hopefully making browsing through the
website an incredibly simple task with no
frilly bits to get in the way.
More specifically, on the Make and Contact
pages there are only small chunks of
information given until the viewer clicks on
the section they are interested in - they
are then given further information and
options. Again this aims to conform to the
internet standard, used in sites such as
youtube, as well as the folder tree one
may see in both windows and mac
operating systems.
Overall the website was purpose built from
the ground up with as clean and simple a
design as possible whilst still offering the
functionality of a more complex site.
nast a
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technical
09
In the beginning was the word. And the
word was autocue. YSTV was in need of
something to aid presenters who weren't
amazing at remembering their lines. And
so, sometime in the 90s, we made an
autocue system from what was lying
around in the station. Because it was
made from spare parts, it was a bit naff.
And because it was a bit naff, it was
christened NaffoCue. However, it was not
meant to be; because it was a bit naff,
NaffoCue kept breaking; it was also prone
to fly off in random directions (aren't ball
mice wonderful?). And because it ran on
two old Acorn machines, no one was able
to update it at all. YSTV's benevolent
Network Engineer looked at this sorry
sight, and vowed to make teleprompting a
much less painful process. Autocue for all!
That said, making a new autocue is a bit of
a faff. So the new version was to be
named FaffoCue.
FaffoCue is a complete rewrite of the
software side of NaffoCue. It runs on any
PC with Windows or Linux, and presents
the script in a nice, clear, easy-to-read
way. Colours, fonts and sizes can be
changed while the program is still running;
sections of text (e.g. presenters' names)
can be highlighted. It also knows what to
do with TV overscan. Released under the
GNU General Public License, it's free
software and anyone can use it. The
hardware side is pretty much the same; we
use specially-built hoods to reflect a
vertically flipped version of the script up
into the camera path. You can see them at
the start of our Best Broadcaster entry,
complete with cute NaffoCue logo.
To send a script, FaffoCue accepts a
network connection and reads commands
in a simple scripting language. This can
control a large amount of FaffoCue
remotely, including the script it displays.
Creating a new script from scratch is as
simple as:
!!script-begin "Example FC script"
*Presenter* I'm naked from the waist down
*Presenter's legs* It's true! You saw it on
the news!
!!script-end
FaffoCue is far from complete. The version
we're using now at YSTV is a stopgap to
get us a working autocue, while version 2
is in development. This shiny new version
will first be used at the Student Union
Elections on 14th March.
The source code and Windows version
can be downloaded from http://
pearfalse.co.uk/faffocue
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